MLHS in conversation with Dave Morrison – Part 2

NEWARK, NJ - JUNE 30: Frederik Gauthier poses with Senior Vice President and general manager Dave Nonis (second from left) and Director of Amateur Scouting Dave Morrison R) after being selected 21st overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs during the 2013 NHL Draft at Prudential Center on June 30, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)

Part Two of Anthony Petrielli’s interview with Toronto Maple Leafs Director of Amateur Scouting Dave Morrison focuses on the scouting process, touching on the logistics of running one of the League’s larger scouting staffs as well as the role of statistics and third-party information. To read Part One, click here.

Anthony Petrelli: How long is your draft process and what all goes into it?

Dave Morrison: It’s the whole year. In many cases it’s their underage year. We all start out with a list from the year before which has basically been started by the reports you do on them as underage players. You already have some framework on a numerical basis based on your rankings and ratings, so typically you have reports on most of the top kids because the good kids play up an age group, or you’re able to see them in the better leagues and they catch your eye. The good kids always catch your eye. In the case of Connor McDavid, it feels like he’s been on the scene forever now. Then, it just starts again. At the start of the year, you have that framework you know from the year before. It’s a yearlong process and it starts with the part-time scouts getting more viewings on them because they’re local to their team or in that area; then it goes to the regional full-time, then the crossover guys, then myself. So it’s a yearlong process. Sometimes two.

AP: Does your staff put any time into when young players are in the GTHL, etc.? Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I’ve noticed you’ve drafted a few guys who were higher in the OHL priority draft than they were in the NHL draft; for example, Greg McKegg was drafted 2nd overall, I believe. Sam Carrick was a 1st rounder. Do you guys watch them at all when they’re that young?

DM: Not typically, to be honest. Some of us may have seen them, but not too often. It’s just too tough to schedule those types of things. The OHL Cup has become a little more important; we’ve had guys there watching that. That’s in their minor midget year, their draft year into the OHL. That’s because it’s a little bit more important and seems to get scouted a little more from the NHL side of things. Beyond that, it’s pretty tough to get out and watch those kids as well. Sometimes you just happen to be in a place where there’s a midget tournament and you’ve heard of a player, so you go over and sneak a peek. I know I snuck a peek at Sean Day a couple of years ago, who was given the exceptional status and ended up in Mississauga this year. I just happen to be at a game and there was a minor midget tournament on another rink in the complex, so I went over and snuck a peek at him because I had heard quite a bit about him. Sometimes you’re fortunate to be able to do that, but otherwise it is fairly tough. In a kid like Connor McDavid’s case, there was so much being said about this young guy that everybody is trying to sneak a peek, I think.

AP: I’ve read that you guys have one of the highest number of scouts in the league; you’re right up there.

DM: We have a larger staff, I’d say. I don’t think we’re the largest staff, but we have a larger staff.

AP: How do you go about managing that? On one hand there’s more eyes on more players, but I assume there’s friction about the board with more hands on deck. There’s challenges in that.

DM: It’s a bit of a bureaucratic system. Every scout reports to another scout. We have it all charted out for every hockey area — In Canada you can go East, Ontario, West, and then we have US East and US West. In Europe we have Scandinavia and Russia. In every area we have a part-time guy and a full-time regional guy. Between those two guys there’s a lot of coordination that has to take place in terms of viewings, coverage, rankings, so that the crossover scouts are able to schedule and come into every area and see all these players. In that regard, we do a lot of regional meetings and we require that each region has a meeting every month and puts a list together, so that I know who their top guys are and from month to month how it’s changing.

AP: Some people take it a little overboard. I was reading an article after the Shanahan hire and a columnist was saying the Leafs should hire a boatload of new amateur scouts to scout the edges of the Earth — it seems unreasonable to think you would be able to manage so many scouts full time.

DM: There’s some people in the scouting business who think smaller staffs are a lot more ideal. There’s less opinions, so if you hire the right people you don’t need that many. I think you can have a larger staff, and have the right people as well, and have a certain level of communication. I’ve tried to make it so that our scouting staff is a team. We work in unison and we have our own little team that has to be on the same page. That’s what I’ve tried to do with our staff. I really like the group that we have.

AP: So, the dynamic with the part-time and full-time is that they’re all watching games and if the part time guys see someone, they’ll report to the full-time guy and bring them over to see him?

DM: Exactly, yes. There’s a lot of coordination. They talk weekly. In each area, the full times and the part times talk weekly and they submit an ABC list. Each week, they go over which players went up or down and then they submit that to our guy who puts our watchlist together. Then, he’ll make the changes accordingly and it gets sent out to each of the crossover scouts and back to each of the regional full-time guys. We make a notation on who has moved up or down, so we’re aware of any changes or if it’s stayed the same.

AP: When you say that you spend a lot of time on players in the year before their draft year, is the way it works is that you sort of weight it toward their progression?

DM: Definitely. I always have scouts at the U17 World Championship, which I think is in Sarnia this year in November. The guys who go there do a full report. I can see where they have ranked them and rated them, what they thought of them, and what type of game they bring. We’ve got all that information and all the reports on different guys from each player’s area; our scouts will have done reports on them and we’ll have all those reports as well. That’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to determine if a player is headed in the right direction.

AP: You guys have drafted a number of players who have had a good second half to their draft year. Josh Leivo would be one. I’d imagine that’s a big thing, that they’re continuing to grow.

DM: We can’t forget that aspect. They’re just kids and sometimes they don’t stop growing until they’re 19 or 20. Sometimes it all of a sudden physically kicks in and you just don’t know when that is going to happen. The coordination and the strength all of a sudden hit them and they can start to play their game. Sometimes you have to be ready for that, it can change at any time with a player.

AP: Do you guys ever read up on independent scouting services like McKeen’s to get opinions on players?

DM: For sure. If you ignore information you are doing yourself and your organization a disservice. You have to believe in what your scouts and what you yourself see, but I think you should pay attention to other sources. I think it’s important to have an open mind, and maybe sometimes you’ve missed something or you need to double check something. Some of these other services work hard at it; whether you agree with them or not, have a look at it and see what they think. It’s information, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t pay attention to it.

AP: When it comes to scouting these players, I assume you guys get more information… There’s definitely a lack of quality statistics and basic information that you guys could really use. For example, I couldn’t look up time on ice stats; I couldn’t tell you how much Gauthier was playing per night. Do you guys get other information sent to you that isn’t publicly available?

DM: Basically, when you’re at a game you have a pretty good idea, watching a higher-end prospect, how many minutes they’re getting. When it comes to our own guys that we have drafted, we may get information from our own individual teams. They’ll send it to Jimmy Hughes or myself, things like time on ice. Usually faceoff statistics are publicly available, sometimes not; sometimes you get those. Different things — hits, scoring chances — a lot of those different things we can get. Sometimes we can get it on the draft, definitely. That happens too. I think when you’re at a game and you’re scouting and watching, that’s something that you should be paying attention to as a scout. I think with the NHL, as statistics become part of everyday life in the NHL, we’ll see it filter down to junior. It’s going to be a process, though. Certain things are going to be more important to certain teams and what not, but so much of it now is becoming available to the teams. Once certain things prove themselves as valuable, junior teams will probably start to implement them, too. There’s a cost, these things are going to cost a certain amount of dollars, and once they have proven useful, I think we’ll see junior teams start to use them. It’s going to be a process.

AP: The San Jose Sharks’ director of scouting was saying they have their scouts hand track Corsi for prospects. I don’t know how reliable or useful it is, but they use it. I don’t know if you guys do anything along those lines?

DM: We’ve done some different things. Sometimes we’ll do home and away splits; what type of stats is a player putting up at home versus on the road. We’ve done different things with different players. It can be valuable, and sometimes after the fact — two or three years down the road — it could also prove to be a misleading thing. You just have to remember you’re developing prospects and sometimes it is information you can use to help the player to become better, too. Sometimes defensively, especially at that younger age, you have to take into account where they’ve come from, where they are. If they’re a first year player or a second year player playing junior, or which team are they on? What’s the system that coach is using? How accountable are they defensively? You have to sometimes be careful in how you measure the stats. It’s all a part of the process. It is all a part of that evaluation.

AP: When you send a scout to watch a game, is he just watching the flow of the game, or is he counting things too?

DM: Different scouts have different ways of evaluating a player. Sometimes it can be positive or negative touches with the puck; when a player touches the puck, does he do something positive with it or negative with it? It can be just as simple as that. They can chart that, and all of a sudden you’ve got a kid with 10 positive touches and one negative touch, which is pretty good, and maybe has one assist. The other guy on the other team, the other prospect, has five positive and four negative but has three goals.

AP: How hard it is for you to account for a team’s systems? That definitely has an impact on how a guy plays.

DM: Huge. Certain junior coaches coach a lot more defensively, some of them coach a lot more aggressively. Part of it is taking all of that into account and measuring the kid himself. Is he going to have that capacity to learn and to want to learn and want to adapt and become a better all-around player? That’s part of what we try to do when we’re drafting players. It comes back to that character part of it; if you have kids with good character, they’re going to do what it takes to become NHL players.

AP: I am a big football guy and I was reading about some of what the Seahawks do; they’ve had a lot steals in late rounds over the last few years. One of the big things for them is they try to find an adversity that the kid has had in his life, just to see if he battles. Morgan Rielly would be an example with the surgery in his draft year.

DM: I think there is something to that. I would agree with that philosophy for sure. I’ve seen it enough times where kids who’ve had different things to go through and it bodes well, because it shows that they have — for lack of a better term — thick skin.

AP: Finn would be another one. He got hit by mononucleosis and that year was kind of a lost one for him; not a wasted year, but definitely not a great one.

DM: Finn has had a couple of things and he just seems to bounce back. I’m looking forward to seeing him become a pro here; I think he’s ready.

AP: With Rielly — I know you don’t follow the NHL as intently, but do you think that injury kind of delayed his growth or set him back a bit, even now?

DM: Oh, absolutely. No question that the best is yet to come. Most players who have had those injuries will tell you it can be 18 months before you’re back to normal. Having said that, back to normal also means you’ve missed time to make yourself better. I think, in Morgan’s case, there’s still a lot of growth left in him.

AP: You can kind of see it in his play that he’s scratching the surface. He’ll do things right but just won’t finish the play, or something; it’s there, it’s within reaching distance, but he hasn’t grasped it yet, maybe.

DM: Yeah. Some of that is just being a rookie, too, adjusting to the pace of the game. But I agree with you that he’s just scratching it and hopefully this year he breaks out. He’s doing the right things this summer to get ready.

AP: I’ve noticed a lot of the ranking systems have rated your prospects on the lower end. The Marlies have been contenders for three years — losing to the eventual Champions three years in a row — and a lot of the prospects have won individual awards. Where do you guys think you’re at?

DM: I don’t necessarily like to rank our staff against other staffs. I do believe we’ve been very underrated. I think if you just look at games played and point statistics from the last nine drafts; I believe someone tweeted out that we ranked fifth in games played and tenth in points scored.

AP: Yep, I actually included that in a piece I wrote; 5th in goals and 10th in points.

DM: It’s a case of — sometimes I wonder if the Toronto Marlies are over scouted because of the centrality of the location. Sometimes when scouts see players too often they tend to pick them apart. On the other hand, I can remember talking to someone about this and they didn’t even know who Matt Frattin was at the time. Matt Frattin certainly hasn’t established himself as a player, but he’s got a chance still. They didn’t even really know who Matt Frattin was, and I said, “this kid is scoring goals at North Dakota like crazy, so how can you not know who he is?” To me, sometimes — and I don’t know why it happens — I just know I disagree and I know I believe in the kids we’ve picked and I think we’ve got a good our pool of prospects. We as an organization believe that and that’s the important thing.

AP: That’s the thing with the Leafs, right? Getting a level of scrutiny and criticism other teams wouldn’t get.

DM: And that’s fine. Nothing is going to change until we as an organization establish ourselves as a perennial winner. When we do that, those things will change eventually. Until we do that, there’s always going to be that negativity in that respect. It’s incumbent on us to remain steadfast and it’s incumbent upon our young guys to prove everybody wrong.

Anthony Petrielli has been at MLHS since 2011. He is known for his weekly "Leafs Notebook" feature, and also writes specific analysis pieces. You can contact him at petrielli.a@gmail.com or find him on Twitter at @APetrielli.

“For sure. If you ignore information you are doing yourself and your organization a disservice. You have to believe in what your scouts and what you yourself see, but I think you should pay attention to other sources. I think it’s important to have an open mind, and maybe sometimes you’ve missed something or you need to double check something. Some of these other services work hard at it; whether you agree with them or not, have a look at it and see what they think. It’s information, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t pay attention to it.” That statement fits well with the philosophy of Shanahan and Dubas.

I have a feeling the Morrison, Hughes and many members of the scouting staff will be kept on.

I like many of our Marlies and prospects

NotSince67

I was hoping for audio. Reading sucks.

WillyNylly

NotSince67 Grab some crayons and draw in the corner, the adults are talking.

WillyNylly

Premium content as always, MLHS. Doesn’t get much better than this site.

WillyNylly

@WesternDP Morrison has earned his keep. Little disappointed in Ross-Biggs-Ryan as a 1st and 2 2nds, but otherwise, our high end picks are projecting well and we’ve made good use of the later rounds.

Great Dane

@WillyNylly They are IMO more Burke picks than Morrisons. But yes more or less a total flop.

MaxwellHowe

Excellent read Anthony. I get the sense Mr. Morrison is more than a little obsessed with Connor McDavid. Several unsolicited mentions.

Burtonboy

Great read as always Anthony. Morrison is always an interesting interview .

Burtonboy

Its going to be really interesting to see how much influence Kyle Dubas has on how this team plays going forward . He’s a huge proponent of controlled entry into the offensive zone . Does not like dump and chase. I can see why . There are twice as many goals scored on controlled entry plays as there are when you play the dump and chase game.

http://www.thescore.com/news/496440

MaxwellHowe

You would think the Leafs have the skilled players necessary to make the necessary plays. Particularly Dmen like Phanuef, Gardiner and Rielly.

TheCanucksnaphook

Excellent Part 2. I think AP found a perfect guy for him. AP loves to talk and write and Morrison loves to talk as well !!

Burtonboy

TheCanucksnaphook Jesus if he ever does an interview with Spott he better allow 6 hrs . Guy can talk your head off about hockey

TheCanucksnaphook

Burtonboy TheCanucksnaphook Spotter beware !!

Komas Taberle

Great article again Anthony, wonderful work!

Mind Bomb

Good morning Folks, and Thanks AP !

Burtonboy

MaxwellHowe Yep

Komas Taberle

Great Dane Bang on, they are definitely Burke picks, so is Broll and Devane

hoolihan

Good read. One question I would like to like have asked to him … how did the scouting staff feel about the Kessel trade? Did they value the draft picks more than the player received in return for them?

Biltmore

hoolihan That’s a hand grenade question. I doubt there would have been an open and honest answer to that.

MaxwellHowe

Morrison probably wouldn’t answer that – but I’m guessing in retrospect no. Seguin is a number 1C and Hamilton will soon be a top 2 D. In fairness, Burke likely figured the Leafs wouldn’t have such high picks.

hoolihan

MaxwellHowe I was thinking “in abstract” … before they knew how the players selected would pan out. Something like, with a bad team would you trade 2 firsts and a second for a proven 30-gaol scorer?

MaxwellHowe

I’d still say no myself, even not knowing who the picks were. At that time the Leafs just didn’t have a deep enough propsect pool to justify the trade.

Good Morning Gents…..terrific article, as usual, Anthony……great to wake up to and digest over my morning coffee….Thank you!

vinoa

This is a very interesting interview. It’s great to hear the actual philosophy of our scouting team. Great writeup as always AP. Is there a plan on interviewing any of the other guys on the management team?

Wilbur

Burtonboy Good article on The Score. Makes you think. In one light you can see the Clarkson signing as not so good. Having said that…I’d have a guy like Clarkson on a line with a couple of skill guys that can carry the play over the blue line and Clarkson’s job is to drive to the net, backing the D off and opening up more room for the skill guys, and then set up camp at the net. His role isn’t to try and spend 10 minutes cycling in the corner. Set up camp in front of the net, drive the goalie nuts, tie up a d-man and get some garbage goals.

Burtonboy

Wilbur Burtonboy Cycling the puck is useless unless you can get the dam thing to the front of the net to get that scoring chance . NJ are great at it but one of the lowest scoring teams in the League . Clarkson was really good when he played with Ellias . I’m hoping someone like Kontiola can be his new Ellias

Cameron19

Loved part 2. – The end is very satisfying for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in arguments with a few posters who get worked up about the prospect rankings they find on the internet (Hockey’s Future), and where that ranks the Leafs. My argument over and over again has been that players drafted to the Florida Panthers for example, are just handed these glowing reviews from people that basically never see them again after their shiny draft day profile is filed away into obscurity. – Florida in particular was an example that drove me crazy when they were rated in the top 3, and we in the bottom 3. You could go down their list, and for every player save Huberdeau (closest age/skill comparable was Kadri), we had a guy approximately the same age out-producing their guy across various leagues, yet every single one of their guys was rated higher, and also more likely to succeed. It’s 2 years or so later now, and basically none of those “highly touted” Panther prospects have cracked the NHL or even made a significant impact in the AHL. It just goes to show that even as prospects they don’t receive any of the scrutiny that potential Leafs do.

– Not that the Leaf prospects have been lighting up the big league either, but they’ve been consistently good and improving at the level below, Shouldn’t that be the biggest indicator of their potential success at the next level?

http://mapleleafshotstove.com/ DeclanK

vinoa Everyone got fired! haha Yes we are.

Waiting4LSC

Solid AP, thank you.

Cameron19

MaxwellHowe Hamilton as a top 2 D is generous.

Black_Hawk

Great two part serier AP, always love reading/hearing to what Morrison has to say

loomx

Cameron19 What Panthers prospects? Markstrom? Because that was pretty accurate. Leafs didn’t have anybody who matched up to him back then except for Reimer who played just as well in the AHL, but with a sample size too small to judge. Who else? Gudbranson?

Cameron19

loomx Cameron19 Howden, Gudbranson, Huberdeau, Markstrom, Bjugstad, and some others. At the time I said that Kadri was better than Huberdeau and that they produced the same in junior – didn’t understand why Huberdeau was considered vastly better. Howden has done nothing. Markstrom is actually starting to look like a potential dud. Gudbranson is a bottom pair D. Bjugstad just broke out, but for him to be the only major piece to come out of the system at that time, and for the ratings to have been that vastly different, was insane to me. Even if you give Florida’s system the edge, that’s really beside the point. I can acknowledge it if they have a better system. What I can’t accept is wild inflating of prospects on one side coupled with intense criticism on the other.

loomx

Cameron19 loomx How they ended up really isn’t relevant to how they should have been ranked though. Markstrom was great and better than any goalie prospect we had at the time. Bjugstad and Huberdeau are both 2 or more years younger than Kadri and have had better first year(s) than Kadri. I wouldn’t say that Kadri’s definitely better than both just yet.

At the end of the day, the team with more top 5 and top 3 picks will have a generally higher ranking than the team with only two top 10 players. I don’t think that’s unfair.

Cloud09

Great interview Anthony, really enjoying the discussion between you and Morrison.

A13276

I do think Dubas will be able to help Morrison big time in turning big data into quality information to enhance the drafting process for the Leafs as it does seem pretty conventional (not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that). As for critics of Morrison and the Leafs drafting I have this: I don’t get the hate on for Dave Morrison; not that I’m a fan of his one way or the other. The Leafs traded away every 1st round pick from 2002 through 2008 (GM’s Quinn and JFJ); may as well say we lost a decade of draft picks and 1st round picks are the closest you’ll ever get to a sure thing in the draft. Of those in the 1st round that were used by the Leafs: they picked Alex Steen, Jiri Tlusty and (god almighty) Tuukka Rask. In return we got Nolan (bad knee), Leetch (cup of coffee), Andrew Raycroft (gag) and Vesa Toskala (double gag). Horrendous period for any team to recover from. Amazing that the Leafs have the frontline talent they do have right now considering it. More recently; they picked Kadri when some suggested they take Cowan (another Schenn); and they picked Morgan Rielly at 5th overall when he had only played 13 games in his draft year. Both Biggs and Gauthier were late 1st round picks and Nylander is an elite talent. So tell me about what is so wrong with Morrison; I’d like to know?